In companies, almost all business tasks are somehow related to the exchange of documents. Document flow significantly affects operational processes, their speed and cost. IDP services allow to simplify document processing, free up employee time and minimize errors.
The volume of electronic document management in companies is growing. Manual processing of electronic and digitized paper documents is becoming more and more labor-intensive and leads to disruption of business processes, inability to make decisions quickly, delays in communications, fines for late transfer of data to regulatory authorities and errors.
IDP services come to the rescue. Their task is to automate the processes of processing documents of various formats. Advanced IDP services can:
- recognize and segment files;
- sort documents by type;
- route documents according to defined rules;
- extract and validate key attributes;
- check completeness and form packages of documents;
- create documents from templates;
- perform inter-document reconciliation;
- check document versions and find changes;
- conduct an intellectual search for information – by meaning and context;
- check the content of documents (for example, according to the specified requirements).
Versatility of IDP services
IDP service helps companies to automate document flow comprehensively. The processing of documents using the IDP product, in our experience, is 5-20 times faster than if it were carried out manually. In this case, the recognition accuracy is up to 95% (depending on the task and input data).
The service receives documents from various sources (e-mail, EDM, streaming scanner, cloud storage, etc.), converts documents into a machine-readable format and extracts key data from them, checks and searches for information, working directly with the content of the text.
One of the key advantages of IDP is the ability to integrate seamlessly into the company’s existing IT environment. In particular, to support end-to-end, fully automated business processes, the service can integrate with RPA (software robots), BPM and AI agents.
With the help of the IDP service, you can cover the entire range of tasks related to documents – from the back office (for example, processing accounting documentation) to specific industry ones (say, creating product cards based on label recognition). Having started to use it, companies, as a rule, then scale the use of the IDP service to the processes of different departments.
IDP business unit use cases
Office work
The company can contact hundreds of documents every day: applications, contracts, invoices, reports, memos and others. The task of the office management service is to process them quickly, extract key data, check for compliance with regulations and enter information into accounting systems (for example, CRM or electronic archives).
With the help of the IDP service, the organization receives an automated process of registration, classification by document types and routing of incoming correspondence to responsible departments or specific specialists, the ability to form an archive of documents with semantic search for information throughout the array of documents in natural language.
Accounting
Companies are often forced to process large packages of primary documents from suppliers: in one of our projects, their number exceeded 250 thousand monthly, and in each package it was required to process an average of 40 fields.
The IDP service provides automated processing of primary documentation (acts, invoices, consignment notes, UPD, checks, etc.), auto-filling of document cards in EDMS and accounting systems, quick reconciliation of the entire volume of incoming documents with internal directories and contracts, verification of the accuracy of the amounts indicated in the documents, deadlines and other details.
Legal service
A large company accepts dozens of contracts from suppliers, partners and customers every day. These documents come in different formats (PDF, Word, scans), often contain tables, and complex formulations. The task of the legal service is to quickly check them for compliance with internal regulations and transfer them for signing.
With the help of the IDP service, lawyers can significantly speed up each stage of contract approval: identify risks, check documents for mandatory or critical wording and for compliance with current legislation, compare a new document with earlier editions, verify contract data with corporate knowledge bases (internal regulations, local regulations, similar contracts from the archive). Also, thanks to the built-in AI, the IDP service can generate new documents using a template.
HR service
Here, the IDP service processes the documents sent by the candidates (work book, passport, diploma, TIN, SNILS, certificates, etc.), checks the availability of all necessary documents, extracts key information and transfers it to the personnel management system. This reduces the amount of routine work of personnel officers several times.
Procurement service
In procurement procedures, the IDP service is used in the verification of tender documentation, reconciliation of suppliers’ proposals with ToR, formation of the initial maximum price, preparation of contract templates, and work with claims.
If a company regularly conducts a large number of purchases, specialists have to process many very voluminous standard documents.
Industry use cases for IDP service
This tool will also be useful for solving specialized problems. Below are a few examples.
In retail, the IDP service speeds up the entry of goods into the retail assortment: it automatically recognizes and processes information from labels and packages in order to form product cards in various management systems.
In banks, the IDP service increases the efficiency of operational processes and customer service: it checks the completeness and correctness of document packages for opening a current account, processes requests from government agencies, and automates the process of issuing loans.
In insurance companies, the IDP service speeds up the process of settling losses and reduces the risk of errors in calculations.
In government agencies, IDP optimizes interaction with citizens and organizations: it automates the processing of requests, routes incoming correspondence to departments and performers, verifies documents when providing services.
By Anastasia Petelina, COO, SL Soft